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shaped by evolved traits/family dynamics, culture of origin, current situation
way you construe your behavior in relation to that of other people |
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| characteristics way that you think, feel, and act that mark you as different from others |
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five traits lie at the core of the social self: open to experience, conscientiousness, extroverted, agreeable, neuroticism aka OCEAN
these enable the individual to adapt to the social environment and enhance chances of survival/reproductive successes
traits have been shaped by evolution |
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| degree to which traits are determined by genes |
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siblings develop into different people so they can peaceful occupy different niches within family environment
develop different traits, abilities, preferences |
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autonomous entity that is distinct, separate from others
asserts uniqueness and independence, focuses on internal causes of behavior, traits stable across time and social context |
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| social self changes in different contexts |
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| distinctiveness principle |
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we identify what makes us unique in each situation and highlight that in our self-definition
what is distinct about us is central to our identity |
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social self is created by acts of construal
symbolic interactionists
social selves become known within social interactions through an understanding of how others see us
actively construe who we are within particular situations
"I" self actively perceives/interprets social self
"me" self is shifting collection of the traits and attributes that the "I" self construes |
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when people have no objective standard that they can use to define their abilities/traits they do so by comparing themselves with others
we are drawn to comparisons w/ others similar to ourselves
downward social comparisons: boost our self esteem
upward social comparison: we do this when we aspire to be better/improve |
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| social self as a narrative |
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| McAdams believed we are continually telling a story about our social self as we live our lives |
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| understanding our own personality traits and our beliefs about other abilities and attributes, preferences, tastes, and talents |
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| concern roles, duties, obligations we assume in groups |
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| our identities in specific relationships |
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| identity with the social collectives to which we belong |
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tendency to elaborate on and recall information that is integrated into our self knowledge
info integrated into preexisting knowledge structures is more readily recalled |
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knowledge-based summaries of our feeling sand actions and how we understand others' views about the self
a. those w/ specific self-schemas should process info in that domain more quickly, retrieve evidence consistent w/ that self-description more rapidly, more strongly resist info that contradicts that self-schema
b. when we form beliefs about ourselves, we are likely to remember info consistent with those self-beliefs, which lead us to attend events and experiences that confirm prior beliefs |
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tendency to judge other people's personalities according to their similarity/dissimilarity to our own
most valued aspects of our own selves guide our construction of other people's personalities |
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| hypothetical selves we aspire to be in the future |
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appropriate behavior is motivated by cultural and moral standards regarding the ideal self and the ought self
violations of those standards produce emotions like guilt/shame
ideal self: wishes/aspirations we have about ourselves [promotion focus: sensitivity to positive outcomes, approach-related behavior, cheerful emotions if we are living up to our ideals/aspirations]
ought self: duties, obligations, external demands we feel compelled to honor [prevention focus: sensitivity to negative outcomes, avoidance motivation, agitated emotions such as guilt or anxiety when we fail to live up to our sense of what we ought to do] |
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when we attempt to control our behavior to live up to important standards/requirements
self control draws on a limited psychological resource |
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positive/negative overall evaluation we have of ourselves
trait self esteem: enduring level of regard we have for ourselves across time [fairly stable]
state self esteem: dynamic, changeable self-evaluations that are experienced in momentary feelings about the self [self esteem shifts during phases of development] |
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| contingencies of self-worth |
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Definition
account of self esteem maintaining that self-esteem is contingent on successes/failures in domains on which a person has based his or her self-worth
cultures/subcultures vary as to which domains are considered most important
self-complexity: tendency to define self in terms of many domains/attributes, its bad to put all your emotional eggs in one basket according to Patty Linville |
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| self-esteem is an internal, subjective index/marker of extent to which we are included or looked on favorably by others |
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| self-evaluation is guided by two conflicting motivations |
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| desire to feel good about ourselves, know the truth about ourselves |
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| self-evaluation maintenance model |
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Definition
we are motivated to view ourselves in a favorable light via two processes
1) reflection: flatter ourselves by association w/ other's accomplishments, especially when the person is close to us and their success is in a domain that is not important to our own self esteem
2) social comparison: noting how our own performance compares favorably w/ that of others, especially when the domain is important to our self concept |
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| we strive for stable, accurate beliefs about the self because such beliefs give us a sense o coherence and make us more predictable/tell us what to pursue and to avoid |
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| gather info about ourselves in two ways |
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Definition
1) selectively attend to/recall info consistent with our self views
2) identity cues: customary facial expressions, posture, gait, clothing style, etc. which signal to others important facets of our identity and how we are to be treated and construed by others |
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how we attempt to control beliefs other people have about us
public self is concerned w/ self presentation: presenting who we like others to believe we are |
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| “oops”, we resort to when we have committed social gaffes and feel embarrassed, these words help reestablish social order when we have violated rules of self-presentation and show how committed we are to the public self |
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| dramaturgic perspective on the social self |
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Definition
| social interaction can be thought of as a drama of self-presentation |
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| public image of ourselves we want others to believe |
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| public self consciousness |
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| awareness of what others think of us [public identity] |
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| private self consciousness |
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awareness of our interior lives [private thoughts, feelings, sensations]
people who attend to their public self [high in public self consciousness] overestimate the extent to which others attend to them |
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tendency to monitor our behavior in such a way that it fits demands of the current situation
1. high self monitoring: carefully scrutinizing situations, shift self-presentation and behavior to fit the context
2. low self monitors: act w/ internal inclinations, impulses |
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tendency to engage in self-defeating behaviors in order to prevent others from drawing unwanted attributions about the self as a result of poor performance
1. People would rather fail and have a good reason for it than go for success and have no excuse for their failure
a. Such behaviors sometimes signal superior genes to potential mates
b. Any success a handicapped organism enjoys must be the product of great talent |
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| statements we make intended to be taken literally/straightforward |
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| indirect/ambiguous, allow us to hint at ideas/meanings that are not explicit in what we say |
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| how people assign causes to events around them and the effects that people's casual assessments have |
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judgments we make about people based on their appearance [quickly made]
two dimensions:
1) positive/negative: untrustworthy/trustworthy, aggressive not aggressive etc.
2) power: confident/bashful, dominant/submissive
masculine feature like a pronounced jaw make people look dominant, shape of eyebrows/eyes can make someone look trusthworthy [youthful faces]
accuracy: predict rather well: high correlation b/w judgments made on facial appearances and own individual's reports of how approachable they are
no connection, however, between judgments of faces and self-reports of agreeableness etc. |
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process by which we explain our own behavior and that of others
people's explanations have tremendous consequences in many domains |
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Definition
person's habitual way of explaining events, assessed along three dimensions: internal/external, stable/unstable, global/specific
tendency to explain negative events in terms of stable, global, internal causes is considered pessimistic explanatory style |
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| processes of causal attribution |
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Definition
People’s assessments of causes of observed or reported behavior are not capricious; they follow rules that make them predictable
i. Determine whether outcome is product of something internal or context/circumstances
ii. Determining whether certain actions are product of internal/external causes requires assessments of what most people are like and what most people are likely to do |
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we should attribute behavior to potential causes that co-occur with behavior
three types:
1) consensus: what people would do in a given situation/whether people would behave in the same way
2) distinctiveness: what an individual does in different situations whether the behavior is unique to a particular situation or occurs in all situations
3) consistency: what an individual does in a given situation on different occasions, whether behavior is same or varies next time [more specific a reaction, harder to make definite attribution to person or situation]
situational attribution when consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency are all high |
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| sometimes derived form what we imagined would happen under different situations or if a different individual were involved |
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we should assign reduced weight to a particular cause of behavior if there are other plausible causes that may have produced it
we cannot be sure that someone's actions are a reflection of a person's true self if the circumstances are such that those actions are likely to occur anyway |
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we should assign greater weight to a particular cause fo behavior fi there are other causes present that normally would produce the opposite outcome
person's traits are discounted as a likely cause of behavior if the person goes with the flow of the situation, but a person's traits are augmented as a likely cause if the behavior goes against the flow of the situation |
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thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened "if only" something had been done different
easy to imagine an event not happening if it resulted from a routine action |
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our emotional reaction to an event tends to be amplified if it almost didn't happen
pain/joy we have from an event tends to be proportional to how easy it is to imagine the event not happening
what determines whether an event seems like it almost happened: time and distance |
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people inclined to attribute failure/bad events to external circumstances but succeses/good events to themselves
motivational bias: people exhibit self-serving bias in attributions b/c doing so makes them feel good about themselves |
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Term
| fundamental attribution error |
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Definition
tendency to locate causes of behavior in elements of a person's character or personality even when there are powerful situational forces acting to produce that behavior
accomplishments: people assign responsibility to individual not to the situation |
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| causes of the fundamental attribution error |
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Definition
motivational influence/belief in a just world: minimize threat to ourselves by attributing people's outcomes to something about them rather than to fate, chance, or luck
just world hypothesis: people get what they deserve in life and deserve what they get [justifies our beliefs]
also: how much something stands our perceptually/salience: some elements in our environments more readily capture attention and are therefore more likely seen as a cause of an observed effect |
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| cognitive mechanics of attribution |
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Definition
1. we observe behavior in question and initially identify what that behavior is/what it means
2. once we identify what we’ve seen, we immediately/automatically characterize the person in terms of the behavior observed
3. upon reflection, we consciously/deliberately take in what we know about the prevailing situational constraints and adjust our internal dispositional inference if warranted
4. situational info is used to adjust initial dispositional inference |
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Term
| why people make overly dispositional attributions |
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Definition
info about situational influence is used to adjust immediate dispositional characterization, and these adjustments tend to be insufficient
also: adjustment phase requires energy/attention so it can be disrupted by anything tha t tires/distracts |
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Term
| actor-observer difference |
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Definition
difference in attribution based on who is making the causal assessment: the actor [relatively disposed to make situational attributions] or observer who is disposed to make dispositional attributions
actors: oriented outward
observers: focus on actor/actors behavior |
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| culture and the fundamental attribution error |
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Definition
westerners = less likely to pay attention to contexts even of a nonsocial kind
asians/westerners differ in degree to which they attend to context: americans better at absolute judgment, japanese better at relative judgment which required paying attention to context
asians: attribute behavior to situation |
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Term
| biases in firsthand information |
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Definition
i. Info collected firsthand is more accurate: advantage of not being filtered by someone else
ii. Can also be deceptive when we are inattentive/misconstrue events that happen before our eyes
iii. Experiences could be unrepresentative
iv. We extract some info form other’s behavior
v. Pluralistic ignorance: when people act at a variance with their private beliefs because of a concern for the social consequences→everyone misperceives the group norm
1. Common in situations where “toughness” is valued
memory biases |
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Term
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| misperception of a group norm that results form observing people who are acting at variance with their private beliefs out of a concern for the social consequences--actions that reinforce erroneous group norm |
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inferences about "what must have been" guide memories fo "what was"
shortcomings: not remembering enough/remembering what never happened can distort judgments
theories and stability and change may distort people's memories when actual events don't fit theories
memories are devices for construing the past |
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| vivid recollections of the moment one learned something dramatic, emotionally charged news |
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emphasizing important/more interesting elements in telling a story to someone else
info about people's actions tends to be sharpened |
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eliminating/deemphasizing seemingly less important details when telling a story to someone else
info about surrounding context tends to be leveled |
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| transmitters of info may accentuate some elements of a story and suppress others in order to foster certain beliefs/behaviors |
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influence on judgment resulting from the way info is presented, including order of presentation
pure framing effects: frame of reference is changed even though content of info is the same in the two versions [only order is different] |
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less pure form of framing that varies the content, not just the order of what is presented
spinning/highlighting relative info and not others |
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| positive and negative framing |
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Definition
mixed nature of most things means they can be described/framed in ways that emphasize the good or bad with predictable effects on people's judgments
negative info tends to attract more attention/have a greater psych impact
info framed in negative terms will elicit a stronger response |
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Definition
people seek evidence that would support their proposition when evaluating it
tendency to seek out confirming info can lead to false beliefs: we can find supportive evidence for anything
questions we ask shape questions we get, providing support for what we're trying to find out |
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Term
| motivated confirmation bias |
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Definition
| info that supports what one wants to be true is readily accepted info that contradicts what one would like to believe is subjected to critical scrutiny and is discounted |
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Definition
| "data driven" mental processing, in which one takes in and forms conclusions on the basis of the stimuli encountered in one's experience |
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| "theory driven" mental processing, one filters and interprets new info in light of preexisting knowledge/expectations |
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| coherent configurations [like schemas, scripts, frames, prototypes, personae] in which related information is stored together |
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| knowledge structure consisting of any organized body of stored info |
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| schemas influence judgment in 3 ways |
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Definition
1) Attention: selective--knowledge we bring to a given situation allows us to allocate attention tot he most important elements and ignore the rest
2) Influencing construals: info stored in the brain can influence how we construe new info- we must rely more heavily on top down processing to compensate for inadequacies of the info obtained from bottom up
3) Memory: influences judgment. info fits in preexisting schema has advantages in recall--schemas may influence what info a person attends to/how its interpreted when encoded, can impact retrieval |
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Term
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Definition
| schemas share certain irrelevant/superficial features with the stimulus being evaluated, schema/stimulus are not well matched on relevant/more important dimensions |
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Term
| two systems of thought in our responses to stimuli |
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Definition
intuitive system: operates quickly/automatically, in parallel
rational system: slower/controlled, serially
systems can agree or disagree
rational system is never engaged --> go with the flow |
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| mental shortcuts that provide serviceable/inexact answers to common problems of judgment |
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judge frequency of probability of some event by the readiness with which similar events come to mind
involves judging frequency of an event, size of a category, probability of an outcome by ease w/ which relevant instances can be brought to mind
biased assessments of risk: if people assess risk by ease w/ which they can bring relevant episodes to mind, their assessments should be predictable from how much press attention various hazards receive |
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Definition
ease/difficulty associated with info processing
subjective experience of fluency influences all sorts of judgments we make
influences how people process relevant information: feelings of fluency have the same effect of being in a good mood, disfluency-->bad mood |
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Term
| representative heuristics |
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Definition
try to categorize something by judging how similar it is to our conception of the typical member of the category
reflects implicit assumption that like goes with like
useful in mkaing judgments about people and events |
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Definition
| info abou the relative frequency of events or of members of different categories in the population |
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resemblance between members and categories
people tend to ignore/under-utilize base rate info when assessing whether someone belongs to a particular category
assessment of the "fit" between person/category blinds us to the usefulness of additional sources of info |
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Definition
| people tend to be unrealistically optimistic about how quickly they can complete a project |
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belief that two variables are correlated when in fact they are not
leads us to expect an association b/w two entities, in turn makes instances in which they are paired unusually memorable |
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Definition
attitudes may conflict with one another
several components of an attitude means not all of them will align
this inconsistency indicates that attitude may not predict behavior very well
introspection may lead us to focus on the easiest-to-identify reasons for liking/disliking something at the expense of the real reasons for our likes and dislikes
contaminating effect of introspection is limited to those circumstances in which the true source of out attitude is hard to pin down
when our attitudes' basis is cognitive, however, the search for reason is more likely the real reason |
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Term
| attitude-behavior consistency is higher when... |
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Definition
attitude and behavior are at the same level of specificity
highly specific attitudes-->better job at predicting specific behaviors, general attitudes are better at predicting how one behaves " in general"
if we meet someone who doesn't fit our prototype, our attitude doesn't apply to THAT sort of person |
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Term
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Definition
mentally activate a concept and hence make it accessible
activation of different mental concepts like traits/stereotypes/goals often directly elicits behavior dictated by those mental contents without awareness on the part of the individuals so affected |
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Definition
| activation of instances of a category tends to yield behavior that contrasts w/ the category on question b/c instances tend to serve as standards of judgment |
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Definition
people try to maintain balance among their beliefs, cognitions, and sentiments [Heider]
o Examples of balanced triad
• You don’t like someone, your friend doesn’t like someone, you and your friend like each other as a result |
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Term
| cognitive dissonance theory |
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Definition
inconsistencies between our thoughts, sentiments, and actions create an aversive emotional state [dissonance] that leads to efforts to restore consistency
used to rationalize decisions: making hard decisions triggers dissonance which in turn triggers processes of rationalization that makes us more comfortable w/ our choices
dissonance reduction processes arise after an irrevocable decision has been made
• Two core assumptions:
o Need for consistency
o People are careful and accurate monitors of their own internal states
• people are good at assessing own internal states through introspection
• Attitude drives behavior
• People drive for consistency
• Basic view of people as tension reducers
o Initial attitude is strong, and person acts in ways clearly inconsistent with it
o “hot” processes mediate [tension reduction] |
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Definition
| tendency to reduce dissonance by finding reasons for why we have devoted, time, effort, or money to something that has turned out to be unpleasant/disappointing |
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Term
| induced [forced] compliance |
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Definition
| compelling people to behave in a manner inconsistent with their beliefs/attitudes/values which leads to dissonance and to a change in their original attitudes or values in order to reduce their dissonance |
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Term
| when does inconsistency produce dissonance? |
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Definition
when the inconsistency implicates our core sense of self:
1) we won't draw negative inferences about others when they can offer an excuse that indicates they couldn't have acted in another way
2) we won't draw negative inferences about others when they offer a justification of their actions
3) we likely judge others harshly in proportion to the magnitude of harm they have done
4) unlikely to judge others harshly if the harm they caused was unforeseen |
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Definition
| bolstering our identity/self esteem by taking note of important elements of our identity such as our important values |
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Definition
people come to know their own attidues by looking at their behavior and the context in which it occurred and inferring what their attitudes must be
• People are NOT good at assessing own internal states through introspection
• Behavior influences attitude [infer attitudes based on how you act]
• NO drive for consistency
• Basic view of people as information processors
o initial attitude is weak OR person acts in ways not radically inconsistent with attitude
o “cold” processes mediate [logical inference] |
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Term
| interpersonal simulations |
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Definition
| experiments in which an "observed participant" is given a detailed description of one condition of a dissonance experiment, is told how a participant behave din that situation, and is asked to predict the attitude of that participant |
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Term
| system justification theory |
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Definition
| people are motivated to see existing political/social status quo as desirable, fair, and legitimate |
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Term
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Definition
people deal w/ paralyzing anxiety that comes w/ knowing the inevitability of death by striving for symbolic immortality through preservation of a valued worldview and conviction that one has lived up to own values/prescriptions
two ways:
1) people think of themselves as connected to a broader culture, worldview, set of valued institutions that live on after they die
2) striving to achieve/maintain high self esteem |
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Term
| Carol Dweck & people's viewpoints on intelligence abilities |
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Definition
• Entity view – abilities are believed to be relatively fixed and stable
o Either have it or you don’t
• Incremental view – abilities are believed to be more malleable
o Practice makes perfect
• When engaged in a challenging task, raising the prospect of failure, these viewpoints trigger distinctly different patterns of responses
o People holding entity viewpoint are more likely to give up
o Incremental viewpoint – failure is not automatically attributed to something intrinsic to the self
• Failure → work harder |
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Term
| law of parsimony [Occam's razor] |
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Definition
o When considering all relevant and competing hypotheses, selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions usually provides the correct one
• When evaluating the probability that a theory is true, best to start out with the most simple explanation, one that requires the fewest number of assumptions. This is important because the more assumptions you rely on for your complicated theory, the more you rely on ALL of them being true. |
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Definition
illusion that everyone agrees with you
own attitude → unknown attitudes of others → infer others are similar to the self |
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Term
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Definition
| people can be surprisingly bad at communicating knowledge because it is hard for people to imagine what it’s like to be on the receiving end |
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Definition
• Lack of insight comes into play: even though social perception is highly subjective, people don’t seem to be fully aware of that fact
• People don’t realize that people are actively constructing their perception of their world |
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Term
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Definition
| • Our understanding of the world is based on our interpretation of reality [which may not correspond to others’ interpretation] |
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Term
| cognitive consistency theories |
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Definition
• attitudes are not always consistent with behavior and vice versa
• there are conditions under which people ARE strongly motivated to be consistent, this is most often true when
o people become aware of an inconsistency in a domain in their life that they care about
o the inconsistency feels unpleasant |
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